News

Increase in pig price fully justified

Chairman of IFA Pigs Committee, Tom Hogan, has said the pig price must rise over the coming days and weeks, and that this rise is fully justified.

Tom Hogan called on processors to reflect the major improvements in pigmeat trade with increased producer prices this week.

Hogan stated:

A number of factors provide justification for a significant price increase, including a stronger export trade with Asian and the important Chinese market in particular - picking up over recent weeks, tightening supplies of pigs across the EU, and a steady demand for Irish product on the domestic market.

While quotes have remained relatively static at the €1.40c/kg-€1.42c/kg level for the past number of weeks, many exporting European pig producing countries, such as Germany and Denmark, have experienced up to a 16c/kg improvement in pig prices in the past two weeks.

Hogan warned all pig processors that without increasing the pig price as a matter of urgency, confidence levels will continue to descend, mirroring their firmly in-the-red bank balances, and that the gains in both productivity and scale at farm-level made over the past five years will be lost.

He called on all pig processors to increase prices paid to well in excess of the €1.50c/kg conservative estimate of the cost of production as soon as possible so that businesses will at least stop making a loss.

At today’s pig price of €1.40c/kg, every pig that leaves a pig farm is leaving a loss of up to €10/pig. This situation is completely unsustainable and needs to be rectified if Ireland’s third-largest commodity sector, with exports of €714 million in 2017, is to survive and prosper.